


Fire Exercises

by madamebadger



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fire, Gen, Humor, That One Time Josie Lit Cullen On Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3302411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which people with floofy pauldrons like Cullen should probably not stand so close to the woman waving around a lit candle on the end of a board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire Exercises

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly think it's a sign of Josephine's general magicalness that she has not burned down the war room by now.
> 
> Silliness. No spoilers to speak of.

Cullen doesn’t notice at first.

(When he recounts this later while telling the story in the tavern, Cassandra will give him the flattest of looks. “How could you not _notice_?” she will ask. But in his defense, there are several torches and a fireplace in the room, and furthermore, Skyhold has so many hearths and is so cold and so drafty that they frequently resort to burning things other than prime hardwood, so a general smoky and singed aroma is hardly unusual.)

Josephine is the first to respond with a sharp gasp, interrupting Cassandra’s report on the current state of the Western Approach. A bare second later, Cassandra looks up and her eyes widen and next to her the Inquisitor yelps. It’s Leliana who has the presence of mind to clue him in, at the exact moment that he notices that he seems to be… smoking?

“Cullen,” Leliana says, with wholly inappropriate serenity, “you appear to be on fire.”

The next few seconds are a flurry which he will remember later in snatches of bizarre clarity. He is attempting to put himself out. Josephine is also attempting to put him out, although since she’s still holding the lit candle that presumably set him on fire in the first place he is spending as much time dodging her as smacking at his pauldrons. Cassandra has one knee on the table, lunging across it toward him and scattering figures in her wake, and she’s saying, “Stop flapping, Cullen. Hold still so I can smother you,” which—he knows what she means, but it sounds alarming. The Inquisitor goes for her staff, and he has the sudden horrible realization that she might actually try to _freeze_ him to put him out.

Leliana calmly reaches for the sideboard, picks up the ewer of water, and upends the entire thing over his head.

He splutters and snorts water out his nose. There seems to have been quite a lot of water for such a small pitcher. Then he inspects his cloak. It has been successfully put out, and there isn’t even much damage.

Everyone stares at him as he drips on the floor.

(Later, again in the tavern, Varric will say, “This might be a flippant question, Curly, but is there a reason you didn’t just take the cloak _off_?” Cullen will point out that ‘being lit on fire in the war room’ is not something he spends a lot of time mentally preparing for. Attacks on Skyhold, yes, demonic invasions, yes, ambushes in the mountains and routs on the plains, yes and yes. Josephine setting him on fire? No.

Possibly he has been going about the process of risk assessment all wrong, all his life.)

“Well,” he says, for lack of anything better to say.

“Quick thinking,” Cassandra says to Leliana, still kneeling on the table with tiny figures of agents and soldiers scattered around her.

“Well, he wasn’t very on fire,” Leliana says, as though this is an entirely reasonable thing to say. “Just smoldering a little.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Cullen says. He has just realized that, while he has been bruised, abraded, sliced, shocked, frozen, pummeled, beset by supernatural plague, and otherwise damaged in myriad ways, in his entire long career as a Templar this is the first time he has ever been lit on fire. It just _figures_ that having been spared immolation by blood mages and demons, he achieves it at the hand of an ambassador with a decided aversion to violence.

Said ambassador is looking at him, hand over her mouth and eyes wide. “I am so, _so_ sorry,” Josephine says, looking wholly at a loss for words. Apparently her extensive diplomatic training has not prepared her for what to say or do when you have set one of your allies alight.

Her candle is still burning merrily away at the end of her writing board.

“Quite all right,” Cullen says, with as much dignity as he can muster considering that water is still dripping off his hair. He thinks that’s pretty good of him, given the circumstances. “But… milady, pray do not take it personally if I keep a wider berth in the future.”


End file.
